With the north and south “bus walls”
completed, the next step in our Parking Lot plan was to form the western wall
with cars. The reasoning behind this is that we still want to be able to shoot
zombies on the highway. Even with the elevated vantage point of the roof of the
store, we wanted to be able to snipe them without have to shoot over the top of
a bus.
I don’t want to feel like I am
repeating myself but it amazing what you can accomplish when you put twenty
people on a task. Our first targets were the three used car lots in and outside
of Langley. Those places were a gold mine. Swiping keys from the offices, we
then fired up ever car we could get from the lots. Driving them back in a
cavalcade, we then started closing the gaps with a variety of vehicles. We
mainly used big extended cab trucks and SUVs along the exterior sections and
then the interiors were more regular and mid-sized vehicles that would block a
zoms progress but still we could score a head shot over the top of.
Note: The north exit of the parking
lot that leads out to the highway has been barricaded off using a large cattle
trailer and a truck to haul it with. This allows us to park our specific sortie
vehicles inside the perimeter.
Just like with the buses, we parked
all the vehicles so that fenders were touching bumpers and then parked the last
few cattycorner to get them all to fit and so that there would be no daylight
between them. The very last of the vehicles chosen to from the wall were the
last vehicles left in the parking lot from customers during Zero Hour. Those
with dead batteries or the ones that wouldn’t start were just put into neutral
and pushed into position. Five guys pushing on the back of a car can get it
where it needs to go.
By us doing this, we have reclaimed
out main parking lot and created yet another line of defense to put between us
and them. Within that parking lot, there are now no places for zoms to hide
behind or pop out of. It is a wide open space of general safety. We could
literally chalk out a full sized basketball court if we wanted to.
Now, we are still keeping the front
doors locked and barricaded with product on one side and vehicles on the other.
Better safe than sorry. We also took a collection of vehicles to make smaller
defensive rings around the back docks for Grocery and Produce. (It is
certifiably impossible for zoms to breech the emergency exits in the bakery and
the northeast corner of the store. So we are not too worried there.) And, yes,
we formed barriers around the trash compactor using the palletized baled
cardboard that were waiting to be recycled.
So now, as I type all this, I guess I
should tell you the truth. I know that the parking lot reclamation was not
necessary and how we have things barricaded now is truly overkill. I can argue
with you that it is better safe than sorry. But this is also a project that I
feel our team needed.
It is butt ass cold out there. The
days are short. The nights are long. I needed a project that people wanted to
be a part of. For those that wanted to get outside, this was there chance. It
was a group effort that everyone was a part of. Snipers were in place while the
buses were being backed in. People were working together to properly coordinate
the placement of the vehicles along the west wall. Zoms that came too close
from all the engine noise were blasted into oblivion.
This was a team building mission to
get us all back on the same page and looking in the same direction. A nice side
effect of the mission was we now have a secure zone where we can outfit and
modify the three buses we have selected to be our “bug out vehicles.”
Judging from the looks on everyone’s
faces and the bubbly energy at dinner tonight, I think it is safe to say:
Mission Accomplished.
